A Time of Dread (Of Blood and Bone #1) - John Gwynne Page 0,18

honour guard. They spread into a wide line behind Sig, Cullen and Keld.

Elgin raised his arm and signalled his warriors; a number of them peeled away to circle the hill, spread to watch for any hidden boltholes.

The ground began to slope upwards, Sig’s eyes fixed on the darker shadow ahead of her, not much more than a crease in an exposed section of the rock of the hillside.

A cave. A lair.

Keld hooked his unstrung bow onto Sig’s saddle and gave the rain-ragged clouds above a dark look – too wet to bother stringing his bow. The huntsman gave a low whistle and his hounds padded left and right, merging with the shadows.

Sig rode past a knot of hawthorn, saw boots poking from it, the stain of blood dark and slick on the grass where the guard had been dragged by Keld into cover. Hammer gave the corpse a cursory glance and sniff as she padded past it.

Only fifty paces from the crease in the rock face, then figures detached from the cave’s entrance: two, three, four of them emerging as if from the very rock itself. Their bowed heads were hooded, cloaked for the rain, one holding a spear, the others with sword hilts poking from their cloaks.

‘Cullen,’ Sig said as she drove Hammer on, the bear jerking into a lumbering run. Behind her the red-haired warrior stood in his stirrups and hurled his spear as the first figure looked up and saw them. His mouth opened wide as he sucked in a gasp of air but the spear punched into his chest before any warning cry could be uttered. The force of the blow threw him back into his comrades in a dark splatter of blood, taking one man to the ground with him in a tangle of limbs. The other two reached for blades as Keld’s hounds leaped in from either side, a blur of motion, a crunch of flesh and bone, a succession of snarling and wet tearing sounds, a gurgled rattle of a cry.

Hammer reached them as the last survivor climbed from the ground, gasping out a warning cry, a glint of steel as he dragged his blade free of its scabbard. Hammer swiped a paw at him, claws as long and sharp as daggers raking across his face and chest and he dropped faster than he’d risen in a spume of blood-mist and gore.

And then there was silence, just the wind and rain, the creak and jangle of harness, one of the wolven-hounds lapping at pooling blood. Keld tutted and the hound stopped. Sig sat high in her saddle, one hand on the hilt of her longsword still sheathed across her back, the other resting upon the weighted net that hung at her belt. These were the precarious moments, when the entrance was still open and unguarded. When escape was still possible for their enemy.

They waited, frozen, all seeming to hold their breath, even the wind dying down for a few heartbeats.

No new enemy emerged from the shadows, and Sig slid from her saddle and approached the entrance. There was a long rasp as her longsword slipped from its scabbard. Cullen tugged his spear from the dead man and joined her in the approach to the Kadoshim’s lair. Keld was at his shoulder, his short-handled axe in one fist, knife in the other. Behind them Elgin and his warriors dismounted and followed.

A dozen paces into the tunnel a torch-sconce was hammered into the stone wall. It flared and sputtered, below it the remains of a burned-out fire. A spit rested above the fire and a pot sat beside it, a few cups of wood and leather about it. No one was there. Keld crouched to touch the ash and embers and his hounds padded past him. Together they stopped, sniffing the air and their hackles rose. As one they growled, a low, savage snarling. Keld looked back at Sig.

‘It’s here,’ he breathed.

A thrill of excitement threaded through Sig, everything around her becoming a little sharper.

Six years gone since the kin last hunted a Kadoshim to bay and killed it.

Cullen swept past her – an unblooded hound eager for the kill.

Sig grabbed his shoulder with her iron grip and scowled a warning at him.

She strode past him and Keld, following the tunnel as it twisted deeper into the hillside, sloping gently upwards. Torches flickered periodically, light then darkness. As she climbed higher the air seemed to thicken, a smell of things long dead, a corruption in